Tuesday, 23 December 2008

each entry is the name of a definite or possible artist and work that matches my criteriæ –including yourselves and / or people you are connected with.

the reason i have sent it is to hear your advice, critique, questions, confirmation and suggestions etc.

i am also curious if you have or know of any images, documentation or other information relating to any of this.

there is a strong possibility that a dossier / archive version of this material could appear as part of an exhibition in paris in the new year –as well as my more extreme hopes and ambitions that it might be accepted by a major art institution / exhibition space / museum etc as a project.

if this incarnation goes ahead, it will be very a la mel bochner’s seminal art exhibition, ‘working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art’, school of visual arts, new york, 1966. as you may or might not know, ‘working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art’ was originally to have been presented as a relatively conventional objects (framed prints) and show (hung on walls). however, the host institution (school of visual arts, new york) deemed this was both expensive and unjustified. because of that (and also in keeping with the idea –and much conceptualism), mel bochner ended up presenting everything bound in 4 loose ring leaf binder files, each on a separate pedestal / socle / plinth / column, for viewers to read, browse and study. exhibits mel bochner chose, included: sketches by the minimalists dan flavin and sol lewitt; an itemised invoice sent to another minimalist, don judd for the materials and fabrication cost of 1 of his works; a mathematician's calculations, formulæ and equations; a page from a number of ‘scientific american’; a musical score by the composer, john cage; the 1st image was a plan of the gallery space; the collection finished with the assembly diagram for the xerox machine used to produce ‘working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art’.

if there is anything you wish to know, ask or say, please contact me and i will do my best to answer and help.

yours, douglas park

the following is an attempt to introduce, describe and explain every exponent and example coming to mind of a seemingly overlooked but nonetheless worthy idiom or genre. this cultural area identified being artists making work after fate striking whatever stage of their own output not only drastically affects outcome –but appears deliberately addressed and used in the same work –or actually generates other work. existing intentional and self-conscious meaning, expectations and plans can change beyond recognition, as well as become further added to -or even entirely new dimensions arise.

questions asked encourage and provoke playing with and defiance of proscribed constructs as to whether any process, product, experience or situation is ever predictable, fixed, definitive or controlled in ongoing and inconclusive reality –and also the feasibility of choice or freedoms within any conditions.

william anastasi: photo canvases, depicting installation views of anastasi’s earlier works en situ –which were same-size shots of the very gallery walls where they hung. anything else?

arman: arman’s chosen / changed name refers to an error missing out the “d” from “armand” –and possibly also his “fernandez” surname as well. anything else?

artists anonymous: video recording conflict with landlord of their london space, during what was otherwise an open-evening. anything else?

john baldessarri: baldessari heralding his increasing changeover to conceptual art, photographing the tail ends of heavy goods vehicles which he found his own otherwise abstract paintings (un / consciously?) resembled, as well as baldessari’s decision to have these earlier, mostly unsold paintings cremated (with official registration and announcement, photographic records, urn of ashes and commemorative memorial plaque).

joseph beuys: using the nosebleed inflicted by a right wing protester to make a parody hitler moustache (as a travesty of hitler), whilst making a fascist salute and raising a beer stein with a crucifix in it. anything else?

derek boshier: unopenable (mock children’s?) book, reacting to censorship and outcry over allegations made in projects by both conrad atkinson and tony rickaby as part of boshier’s late 70’s ‘lives’ arts council exhibition. possibly other work / material. anything else?

damien bourdaud: ‘wheres my catalogue?’. publication / other material(?) protesting the cancelled reprinting of a catalogue put out by tanja grunjert of / including bourdaud. the grounds given, being that bordaud’s content and imagery were too extreme to justify public funds and resources from the french state / loire region. anything else?

ian breakwell: diary entry (and any audio record?) describing 1 of breakwell’s early expanded cinema performances and lecture presentations in some hotel –disrupted by some loud and destructive domestic argument in the kitchen. tape recording the old bailey law court car bombing by mistake (because machine was left running when the phone rang, then….). possibly final works charting lead up to his death. anything else?

marcel broodthers (and izi fiszman!). unclear which work/s are concerned. fiszman bought –then deliberately damaged work by broodthaers. the same work/s were given visible (and emphasised?) and maybe crude repairs. also, the very 1st / an early editioned work by broodthaers, which came about when he was scheduled to be in a portfolio of (otherwise CoBrA, informele and taschiste etc artist’s) prints, then saw his name misprinted and incomplete on the prospectus / advert, so broodthaers indicated and corrected the mistake –a reproduction of which became his contribution. anything else?

daniel buren: ‘p h opera’. after appearing in a group show of conceptual art at le palais des beaux arts / het paleis voor schone kunsten (bozars!) in brussels, buren somehow wrangled an overstayed welcome reign-of-terror there –dragging on for 3 years. buren’s presence consisted of a serial changeover of anonymous and discreet, yet dominant and overwhelming interventions using his customary trademark striped screens, sheets and panelling, appearing and placed in and around different features of the premises, while the program continued as normal. considered and described as a theatrical spectacle, ‘p h opera’ interacted with every exhibition staged there during this period. when buren was meant to appear in a survey of french art –he surrendered his gallery space and publication pages to the young politico collective, pour. various developments (and sometimes, difficulty and conflict) happened between buren, the institution’s hierarchy and personnel and exhibiting artists and organisations. anything else?

sophie calle: inclusion in calle’s work of interpersonal problematics (objections, accusations, action taken etc) from people used in her reality-warp scenarios. anything else?

richard crow / institution of rot: breakage and leaking in the post of a bottle of wine mailed to crow by fellow artist, rut blees luxemburg (of her family’s blees-ferber mosel riesling), still included in performances and exhibited in that state. stray dog coming in off the street, snaffling up and making off with a jam-tart from 1 of crow’s floor pieces. 1 of crow’s performances and some building work scheduled to happen at the same time. ‘bring freude ins leben’ (inscription on blees luxemburg’s mailing) meaning “bring joy / happiness in/to life” –misinterpreted by writer and critic ed scheer as: “bring DR SIGMUND FREUD in/to life” –later on, inspiring ‘bring freud ins leben’, another work crow made as part of a public billboard project in vienna. anything else?

claire fontaine: ‘nurseryworld’. pre “claire fontaine” site and trophy salvage to an empty derelict building –coming to nothing when upon arrival with equipment needed –the building was no longer there anymore, having been demolished to make way for the garden area of some luxury home developments. however, this added to many of the original concerns, hopes and interests the artist had in the name of the premises and issues arising. a photo of the exterior, a written and recorded prose text by douglas park (i, me, myself!), a remake of the shopsign and (possibly?) a miniature model of the building exist (and other material / work?). anything else?

coum transmissions / genesis p orridge: mid 1970’s obscene mail prosecution court case (as public art event) and dossier bookwork, ‘gpo versus gpo’ / ‘postal event’ (published by ecart, geneva –much more recently since reprinted by some canadian outfit) of documentation generated. not long after, displaying ensuing press cuttings writing up their even more notorious swansong exhibition, ‘prostitution’ at the ica –of which they / others said “press cuttings about press cuttings”! also, when coum transmissions became the avant garde band, throbbing gristle (which soon replaced their art practice), their debut album ‘2nd annual report’ / ‘music from the death factory’ (1977) ended up with brief outbursts of creepy orchestral (auschwitz?) chamber-music whenever theres no sound otherwise between and within different tracks –because the master-tape was a found recording –and throbbing gristle and the pressing plant had no choice but to keep it. anything else?

simon cutts: ‘homage to homage to georges seurat’. archived correspondence between cutts and the arts council of great britain over deteriorating quality and condition of cutts’ ‘homage to georges seurat’ print (using “hundreds and thousands”!) and attempted problem solving. updating his “found poem” (lifted from ‘guantanamera’ lyrics!), ‘i prefer the streams of the mountain to the sea’, by adding “still” between “i” and “prefer” (also, the variations on that with ian hamilton finlay). anything else?

tacita dean: ‘stowaway’. objects (newspaper boats and hats) made using news coverage of dean’s work of the same name (appropriately!) disappearing in transit. anything else?

braco dimitrejevic versus goran “artiste anonyme” trbuljak: ‘sculpture made by tihomir simic, zagreb’. documentary photographs and (now bronzed) relic. work named after the unsuspecting member of the public (tihomir simic) who unknowingly made and signed the work for dimitrejevic, trbuljak and other members of their collective (also named after tihomir simic). since then, ‘sculpture made by tihomir simic, zagreb’ has been claimed and shown as being by both dimitrejevic and trbuljak –which becomes ironic but fitting given facts that importance, authorship and value were deliberately addressed, the involvement of tihomir simic in making the artefact –and it was part of a group venture. also, dimitrejevic made a constructivist / dada / merz / scrapbook looking collage out of ephemera with the name of one of the “casual passers by” he featured on some public billboard and / or monument. stories etc about the owners of artefacts appearing in dimitrejevic’s ‘triptychos post historicus’ still-lives playing games with works in museum collections. anything else (by dimitrejevic and / or trbuljak)?

chris dorley-brown: series of otherwise ordinary photos of social housing –one suite made many years before the more recent others. the 1st group depict london social-housing (recorded for semi-official commission), then much later dorley-brown revisited the very same vantage points and scenes to remake the compositions according to identical formulæ –only also including every plus and minus since. symptoms bearing witness to social, political, economic and cultural changes happening over the interim period. anything else (given dorley-brown’s preoccupation with representing passage of time)?

max ernst: ‘the return of the belle gardener’. late career painting celebrating the rediscovery of ernst’s earlier ‘belle gardener’, which was seized for the nazi ‘entartete kunst’ show. anything else?

general idea: legal dispute with ‘life’ magazine over general idea’s ‘file’ periodical –and the (at least 1) “reformed” number (any ensuing work / material?). work / documentation about the burning down of their ‘miss general idea 1984 pavillion’. anything else?

iqbal geoffrey: t.v satirical documentary (on pakistani t.v –and maybe elsewhere?) protesting geoffrey’s “unfair dismissal” (and racial etc discrimination?) at the hands of the national gallery in london after attempting to become their artist in residence. also related public urination event and relic (perfume bottle). dispute with hayward gallery london over loss of work. anything else?

hans haacke: additions added to work presenting information about investigations into provenance of an old master painting. any work (not just mention in publications) charting events occurring after 1st showing of ‘der pralinenmeister’ (exposee into peter ludwig’s chocolate business empire and art collecting)? open letters (in art periodicals etc) about furore over haacke’s work pulled from nyc show. anything else?

gary hume: early ‘90’s questionnaire, requesting opinions, suggestions and advice about possible improvements to his work (at that time, mostly large scale and glossy polytychs of skull-like hospital doors). interestingly, not long afterwards, hume quit such almost abstract trademark paintings -in favour of his still glossy, but more imagistic pop icons. karsten schubert (hume’s then london gallery) let hume go –only for hume’s new departure to become more successful than ever before. anything else?

image bank: an art collective –which became better known and more successful as a corporate / communications industry serving archive / agency. any specific works / materials, related to this changeover?

alan jones: including newsclippings and satirical cartoons of jones’ fetish maid 3 piece suite furniture in his own work (such as the 1970’s print portfolio, ‘ways and means’). any other work?

robert morris: ‘statement of æsthetic withdrawal’. frame containing engraved lead relief depicting front and side plan view of morris’s previous work ‘litanies’ (another lead relief, with a bunch of keys, each with a duchampian reference or quote engraved on it and their impression) alongside legal documents hereby reclaiming or denouncing any merit or worth from ‘litanies’. everything described as “exhibits” (as though legal and forensic evidence). morris made ‘statement of æsthetic withdrawal’ in reaction to phillip johnson (architect and collector) deciding to keep ‘litanies’ –but not pay for it –on the grounds it was not art. ‘statement of æsthetic withdrawal’ was given to johnson by morris (like the shirt off his back!). much later, both works were donated to moma nyc johnson (whether or not either or both of them are art –and / or johnson is architect and / or his work counts as architecture!). presumably theres now much more specific and focused interest in ‘statement of æsthetic withdrawl’ than in ‘litanies –due to more conceptual nature and engagement and use of factors in society. anything else (maybe linked to his ill fated and much satirised obstacle course / MISadventure FOULplayground at the tate gallery london in the early 70’s etc)?

meret oppenheim: upon being invited by a gallerist to make editioned replicas of her earlier and best-known work, the fur-lined teacup, saucer and spoon (which overshadowed most of the rest of oppenheim’s work), oppenheim accepted, but instead designed and kitschy framed icon –with a furry motif of a teacup, saucer and spoon. anything else?

douglas park (and serial collaborative partners-in-crime): artwork (collage / text etc) about an idea of park’s used (neither consulted, accredited or paid) by another more exposed and successful artist –who was involved in the same project where the same work had appeared. douglas park’s text and ronee hui’s image both ruined on hui’s pages in the 2003 sharjah biennale book. anything else?

tom phillips: residual and secondary paintings based on and caused by ongoing work in progress (and images of earlier work referred to –but not for obvious reasons –if that makes any sense / comes across properly –concerned with time and process?). anything else?

anne-marie & patrick poirier: decision to leave an interfered with / rearranged / vandalised work (one of their pseudo archæological / classical / antiquity fragments / remains / finds) in that same state or even act upon it –thereafter often making and presenting some of those works in that manner (as a cairn / pile / mound). anything else?

robert rauschenburg: following the advice of an italian critic, gathering some unsold work –and throwing them off a certain bridge into a certain river. anything else?

ad reinhardt: when a museum complained that one of reinhardt’s black on black (pure / invisible / standard etc) paintings was damaged accidentally and needed restoration, reinhardt recommended / offered / gave them a new / existing painting –alongside some aphoristic advice, claiming it looked even more like the work they had than it ever could have done itself (perhaps based on some much earlier exchange between pablo picasso and gertrude stein about picasso’s portrait of stein and stein herself one day looking like each other). anything else (some of his and others aphorisms about art were in answer to each other)?

kurt ryslavy: establishing an austrian wine business (the 1st in belgium and amongst the earliest outside austria) after importing and serving some austrian wine in belgium as part of an art project / event / show. since then, ryslavy’s practice and life as an artist and (austrian) wine merchant have been intertWINEd as one (or wine) and the same.

terry smith? ‘stolen property’. when terry smith was 1 of the selected invitees visiting the former-power station that’s now the tate modern, smith remembered that his uncle had worked there and deemed it to be a totalitarian environs. most of smith’s work were wall drawings, often using imagery and objects found en situ (the burnt remains of a ladder, a drawn and annotated plan of an old fishing boat etc). however, as well as these commissioned and official works, executed at the site and only recorded by photographs and working drawings, smith also removed and kept door fittings (locks, bolts, handles, keyholes etc). ‘stolen property’ is shown in plastic bags a la seized artefacts / court-case exhibits etc. anything else?

daniel spoerri: before and after photos of 1 of spoerri’s ‘tableaux piege’ assemblages (remains of meals preserved on tabletops) which vermin and other parasites had eaten much of (unclear if the work was ever restored). anything else?

survival research laboratories: once, before srl were about to stage 1 of their automata and pyrotechnic spectacles, they heard that some people planned to watch from a bridge nearby, instead of paying to attend (and perhaps being at risk from the show itself). srl treated the pavements of this bridge with chemicals which would emit stench so powerfully vile and fowl as to deter people from spending time near them. anything else?

jeffrey vallance: as a student work, having a frozen chicken given a funeral and buried in a pet cemetery, claiming it to have been his pet, “blinky the friendly chicken”. years later (by which time vallance became a successful artist and partial celebrity –and the grave and pet cemetery gained some cult status) vallance had “blinky the friendly chicken” exhumed for a forensic autopsy and post-mortem in an attempt to establish cause of death and conditions occurring since. the original bookwork vallance put out 1st time round was reprinted, with all the new material. The 2nd revised edition also charts vallance’s moving onto more profound and deep concerns (mysticism, myth, ritual, conspiracy theory, the supernatural, anthropology etc). later retrieval of his decorated power switches and points from the museum where he illegally planted them. anything else?

any artist/s and / or collective/s with names starting with “Z”? that way, at least the 1st and last letters will be like bookends.

forgotten / unknown names:

scandanavian artist who kept / framed / showed / sold court orders etc re: his theft and sale of antique furniture etc from a museum (as his “contribution” to a show he was in there). same artist who did stereoscopic views of himself squinting cross-eyed and / or with his head in motion.

czech painter based in the netherlands who uses multiple paintings he’s working simultaneously on to make and process each other (in addition to or instead of brushes and other implements). at least some of them partly look like the early t.v signal / organic propeller pictures by lawrence weiner.

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

ADRIANA LARA at ART PERFORM AT ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH curated by JENS HOFFMANNDate: 7 | Dec | 08 | Sunday, Time: 3pm “Untitled”An actress, who can be seen as a stand-in for the Mexican artist Adriana Lara, performs an original monologue written by the artist. Her text brings to life one individual’s experiences and reflections on a life in the art world. Enacting these comic and personal accounts, the actress reveals observations that are known but often left unsaid.

Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani is pleased to announce the opening of the Between Facts and Politics exhibition, with works by one of the most renowned Greek artists, Vangelis Vlahos. For his second show in Italy, Vlahos has installed a generous selection of his recent works in the gallery, most of which have never been shown before.

Internationally acclaimed for his work on social-history archives, on the symbolic value of architecture and on public memory, Vangelis Vlahos is bringing to Milan a broad-ranging work of 22 paintings/displays with an arrangement of photographic material and newspaper cuttings referring to about one year of Greek history, under the title 1981 (Allagi). Both this work and the second in the show, which is a sequence of 42 photographs under glass, entitled Images to Influence the Reading of Greece’s Interests in Eastern Europe and the Balkans Today, take their original documents from the archives of Eleftheros Cosmos (“Free World”), which was the official newspaper of the military junta of the Colonels in Greece. The last work, which is also dedicated to the influence of Greece’s current role in the Balkans, consists of two architectural scale models, The National Bank of Greece (NBG) 1961-2006.

The ruins that Vangelis Vlahos brings to light are not exactly “classical”, even though the remains that emerge from his excavations are often fragments of urban architecture.

The immediate impression is that the relationship between the safety and vulnerability of power is at the heart of Vangelis Vlahos’s works, irrespective of the type of power (military, political, economic, etc.) involved at that particular time. Indeed, it is precisely the most significant transitional periods and moments of change – such as the fall of the Greek military junta or the end of the Berlin Wall – that best reveal the resilience or fragility of power behind the means it uses to show or conceal itself.

Even so, what Vlahos’s works show us is in any case a representation of power which is always caught precisely when its supposed integrity is threatened or tarnished. Traumatic political incidents that put power at risk or that challenge it acquire the same significance as the objectives it fails to achieve, the projects that are never realised, or the ruins of a reality that does not fully come to fruition.

On the one hand we find in Vlahos’s works a 1:150 scale model of the American Embassy in Athens, which was built to a design by Walter Gropius in the late 1950s. This cardboard model is shown perfectly intact next to a curved metal wire that indicates the trajectory of the anti-tank rocket that was to have hit the diplomatic mission but that fell outside its walls. On the other hand we find a scale model of the Tower of Piraeus. This was a 25-floor building commissioned by the military junta as a monumental business and trade centre for the most important port in Greece. It was never completed or entirely used before the regime of the colonels fell in 1974 and was thus a failed utopian dream.

But this representation of power acquires full meaning in the work of Vangelis Vlahos only when compared with another principle of authority, which is the fundamental principle of history, and of the discursive formation that we refer to as “history”. It is here that the true importance of Vlahos’s work comes out in its entirety – when what is being investigated is not so much the deeds and data of power as such, but the knowledge that they define, and the influence they exert. In other words, the ways in which these data are recorded and accumulated. Or better, the strategies they adopt to create a memory or bring about a deletion of history to create permanent or temporary amnesia.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published for the occasion by prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, with essays by Marco Scotini and Aristide Antonas.

The work of Vangelis Vlahos (Athens, Greece, 1971) is celebrated around the world. His participation at the Prague Biennale (2007), the Sao Paulo Biennale (2006), the Berlin Biennale (2994) and Manifesta 5 (San Sebastian, 2004) have all been most significant.

SMART Project Space presents the first solo exhibition by French artist Matthieu Laurette to be staged in the Netherlands since 1998. Laurette established himself in the 1990’s with his exploration of the relationships between art, spectacle, media and economy using a variety of media, from TV and video to installation and public interventions.

Laurette playfully described the exhibition as “a sort of Institutional Critique meets Film Industry meets Art Sociology meets Art Economy meets Art History" where visitors can observe ways in which the film industry cultivates feeds and perpetuates the myth of the artist.

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...